Republicans at the state level provide the general business climate, but Democrats at the local level influence the schools, provide many social services and create a civic atmosphere that welcomes diversity and attracts highly educated workers. Very often the conservative state authorities are at war with the more liberal city authorities over things like minimum wage laws and L.G.B.T.Q. rights. But, at least for right now, the red-blue mash-up seems to work.
But Brooks would like it if one party would embrace the entire range of what he thinks works: "conservative-leaning on business matters and more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development."
He'd thought "the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney Republican Party" was "morphing" into this "policy blend that manifestly works." But now, it's "a working-class populist party that has no interest in nurturing highly educated bobo boom towns."*
Brooks will never stop saying "bobo." Does anyone other than him use that word? I know it's from his book "Bobos In Paradise," and I even read that book, but I can never remember what "bobo" is a portmanteau of. I looked it up (again) — bourgeois and bohemian. I suppose I'm in the group Brooks thinks he's talking about, but I don't see why working class people ought to feel nurturing toward my city. And I'm worried that impractical people in my own city are going to ruin things.
Anyway, fix the terrible headline. Brooks seems to think the ideal is to live in a blue city in a red state. How could that possibly explain why people are fleeing? It would need to be that they are fleeing blue cities in blue states for blue cities in red states or fleeing red cities in red states or — do these exist? — red cities in blue states.
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107 comments:
"conservative-leaning on business matters and more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development."
This is such horseshit. It isn't just business matters. It's also education, immigration, workforce development, economic development, medicine, military affairs, transportation, etc etc etc. Those are all conservative-leaning now.
Liberal-leaning is 100% alphabet-advocacy, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, three sixty five. The oxygen has been sucked from the room, and 35 year old dead-end male transvestites pretending to be ballerinas are doing the sucking.
Liberals made this monster. They own it. And nothing else.
"Republicans at the state level provide the general business climate, but Democrats at the local level influence the schools, provide many social services and create a civic atmosphere that welcomes diversity and attracts highly educated workers." I sat and thought a few minutes as to whether this is a valid description of the balance in Georgia between the state goverment (R) and the governments of the City of Atlanta and various other municipal and metro county governments.
It's not.
Bad choice on Brooks' part. When I read Bobo, I think of a sub-species of chimpanzee.
Austin is a blue city in a red state, and many Progressives have fled California to live there. Not all that long ago San Diego was a red city in a blue state. (That has changed)
The fact that Mr. Brooks is arguing that the schools in cities are something to be admired is sufficient to classify Mr. Brooks as a bobo.
Shorter Brooks. The broken window fallacy.
People, in general people in red states, like the rule of law. People in charge of blue states don't.
Bobo is Spanish for “buffoon.”
Entertain the idea that there is such a type of person as the highly educated boob — that’s “boob,” not “bobo” — and that David Brooks epitomizes the type. Otherwise he would not be writing to you from The New York Time op-ed page.
Obvious questions: Where does Brooks live (city vs. suburbs), and where do/did his kids go to school (public vs. private)?
Bobo is Spanish for “buffoon.”
"the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney Republican Party"
Screw the the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney Republican Party
FUCK the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney Republican Party
To HELL with the George W. Bush/Mitt Romney Republican Party
Translated into plain speech: Many blue states became utopian ideological bubbles and then descended into dysfunctional regulatory rigid nightmares. The red-blue combination merely returns to the "diverse, open-minded, positive, forward-looking" and dare I say actual progressive sanity that used to be more common.
The screw turns. Left becomes right as right becomes left.
The mash-up doesn't work, any more than living a $100,000 lifestyle on a $30,000 budget "works" simply because you have a credit card to cover the difference. Eventually, the bill comes due.
Also, I'd dispute your tag, "what Trump did to the GOP." Trump didn't do this, the GOP leadership prior to 2016 did this. They embraced Bushism- the seductive promise to the GOP that they could win suburban voters with "kill terrorists, and cut taxes" policies, along with the promise that they were somehow more competent at managing the socialist superstate than the Dems. Unfortunately, this didn't work, and now they're like a nerdy kid sitting home along on Friday night, telling himself that Mary-Sue Rottencrotch will eventually realize what a catch he is, when she sees that he has a respectable degree, good job, and volunteers at his church.
Mary-Sue, meanwhile, is getting railed by the moody artist who has a minor drug habit and wealthy parents to keep him afloat. And even if she finally decides to settle down with Nerdy McBoring, she'll never respect him.
"create a civic atmosphere"
Which Dem-ruled city has a "civic atmosphere"? Define and measure, please.
"and L.G.B.T.Q. rights."
Fight over T, maybe. LG? What are B and Q rights anyway?
"the red-blue mash-up seems to work"
So is he implying that Dem one-party city-states--SF in CA, Chicago in IL, NYC in NY state--don't work?
"the entire range of what he thinks works: "more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development.""
Is he saying that education in blue cities "works"?? For the unions, sure. Anyone else?
"And I'm worried that impractical people in my own city are going to ruin things."
Ah, yes, being "impractical" is their problem. If only they were more "practical."
Is this in the fiction section?
He says it himself: often the two sides are at war. That's the key ingredient, like head-butting rock singers and lead guitarists. The tension makes the art. Romney/Bush and their ilk will never govern well because they appease when they should oppose.
In what world do blue cities out perform red suburbs in education?
The best metaphor for Brooks' preferred migration pattern is virus particles (his "bobos") being released from one organism (blue state urban areas) to invade, infect, and destroy others (red state urban areas).
It maps well.
Oh yes, let's completely ignore the Democrat-controlled teachers union that brought K-12 education to a standstill during the pandemic, the incompetent school boards, the DAs that don't follow the laws, the homelessness, the crime, the overwhelming cost of the sanctuary of illegal immigrants, etc.
What is he smoking? And who is really paying him for this so-called opinion?
Brooks’ revealed preference (blue city, blue state) indicates that he is just looking to fill column inches with whatever inanity pops into his head.
"Play that funky music, white boy!" Or, more precisely in Brooks case, an endless reprise of his one hit, BoBohemian Rhapsody.
Brooks is clueless.
The blue public school model is failing. In deep Blue Denver, for example, crime, bullying and kids with guns AT DPS schools are at alarming highs. After Saint George Fentanyl Floyd was murdered by the police - the corrupt left used that incident to de-fund the demoralize all police all over the country, and, allow crime and bad behavior to flourish. (See Soros pro-Crime DA's inserted all over the nation with dark Soros funding) (see alarming rates of shoplifting, car theft, and other criminal behavior/ former felonies demoted to lesser crimes as perps walk out the revolving door if they are caught at all... etc) (it makes sense when you realize the rot goes up the Crook Biden family - see Wendy's link from another thread)
Again - Brooks is merely spitting out an old cliche that no longer aligns with realty.
“Liberal-leaning” in education WORKS?! Liberals have been in charge of education for well over a generation, and we are falling behind more and more. I’m guessing he’s never seen the percentage breakdown of how many of today’s children score above grade level, at grade level, and below grade level. Feel free to google it if you had your morning anti-depressant already.
Do red cities exist at all? The greens have been thinking globally, acting locally for 30 years now. Wormed their way into city councils and neighborhood groups and even county commissions. Oh and govt jobs and nonprofits.
Add this to old Dem city machinery and they've locked up local gov everywhere, while local GOP were running businesses or collecting rents.
And Brooks is a dodo.
He's thinking about Austin and Houston.
Austin is run by savage Democrats, but Joe Rogan and Elon Musk are there rocketing the culture into outer space.
Houston is the most demographically diverse city in America at the moment and is run by Democrats fully now, but just barely. Noticeably BLM riots didn't happen in Houston.
Among the things Brooks says "Democrats at the local level influence the schools, provide many social services . . ."
First, social services are "provided" by taxpayers (present and future) mainly funneled through federal programs and bureaucracies. If much of that goes into cities, it is because that's where the poor are, not because cities are controlled by Democrats. Secondly, as for Democrats "influencing" the blue city schools, this apparently refers to the horribly dysfunctional holding pens where vast swaths of students start low and fall further behind academically, even as these schools pander to the lifestyle obsessions of the Democratic elites that control them.
Geezus, David, "liberal leaning" on education is why a tiny minority of public-school students in cities like Chicago can read and compute at grade level.
More seriously, Brooks fails to acknowledge the inherent instability of his Red State/Blue City paradise. Blue States are typically dominated by a non-dense rural/small city/suburban mix of intact traditional families. As long as Red Cities like Omaha or Salt Lake City or or San Fran and LA (in the 70s) or Denver (in the 80s) don't overwhelm the State politics demographically, the combination can happen. But as the jobs growth and the "next cool place" attracts the hoards of singles who want to party into their 40s, the State goes Blue and the Blue Cities go extreme Blue, demonically attacking every conservative value like marriage, merit, law and order.
Also, K-12 education in Blue Cities has always been better? Really, David?
Because... : Liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development. turns out to produce urban High Schools that graduate literate and arithmetic capable young adults? Because it's the cities, rather than the rural FFA-offering schools, that graduate a work force ready for jobs in the local economy? Because it's the cities and schools with "mainstreamed" classes mixed with all races and language groups and intact families with long roots in the area who are easiest to administrate and manage?
Why does the Liberal view on schools and work seem to ignore the lived experience of so many of us?
Liberal education policies? Hahahahaha
San Antonio is the only blue city in a red state that I can find. At least in the top 10. I visited there about 10 years ago. The desk clerk at our hotel told us not to walk the four blocks or so to the Alamo. We did anyway. It was definitely in the early phases of SF disease. I don’t imagine it’s any better now. But at least in Texas they put violent criminals in jail.
Does Austin work well?
After their Abolish police moves, the city can't recruit officers and Texas has had to deploy (with Austin's gratitude) State police in large numbers...
So Brooks is arguing that we should all flee to Memphis TN, right?
Once again Progressives telling us what we SHOULD want.
And doing everything in their power to take away all other options.
Wait a minute. I thought everybody was moving to Duluth.
Brooks obviously knows nothing about large city public schools in America. Demmies influence the Chicago Public Schools a lot. They are broke, expensive, violent, and failure-ridden.
Great job, Brooksie.
But now, it's "a working-class populist party that has no interest in nurturing highly educated bobo boom towns."
Yup, exactly. Brooks 'red-blue mash-up' is not dependent only on a Republican Party in the mold of W and Romney but of a Democrat Party that was much more centrist as well, in the mold of Bill Clinton. As the Democrat Party is now being run by and for UMC white Millennials, the GOP is naturally becoming the opposite.
I'm not seeing better educational systems run by the left. That's especially true is we isolate to the educational systems in Blue Cities. That anyone would make Brooks' argument seems silly to me. The people I know fleeing what I would refer to as blue urban areas to red rural areas is because they want to raise their kids in those red rural areas, where crime is low and education is better. Alas, this is David Brooks, who I never thought sensible or "in-touch".
Brooks is a bubble person. Blue cities are cesspools of incompetence, filth and crime.
The only point worth discussing about the migration is whether the migrants will destroy red states with blue voting patterns.
Just quit reading David Brooks, and Leonard Pitts and Tennessee Coats, and all the other one trick ponies you like to read and blog about.
All one trick ponies. All the time. Myopic beyond belief.
Brooks is utterly incoherent here. Blue cities in all states are failing to provide quality of life, effective education, and the pathways to upward social mobility that drew people to cities in the first place.
One book worth reading on this topic is Robert Putnam's "Our Kids".
It would need to be that they are fleeing blue cities in blue states for blue cities in red states
Isn't that more or less what's happening? Or perhaps, that people are fleeing to the purple suburbs of blue cities in red states. I recall seeing a net migration map of Texas recently -- I forget where -- and most of the migration looked like it was to the urbanised triangle formed by Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio (with Austin along the line between Dallas and San Antonio). All three cities are varying levels of "Blue," even if (other than maybe Austin) they're still a lot less blue than most blue-state cities. That said, the entire interior of that triangle leans strongly Republican. Trump won it all in 2020, other than the aforementioned cities, but the suburbs have been comparatively close in the recent past, e.g. 2008, 2012.
I don't think there are any "red" cities in the US at all -- even Republican-governed American cities tend to lean far to the left of the mean. This is in somewhat stark contrast to Korean and Japanese megacities, which are often (usually?) governed by conservatives, e.g. Ishihara Shintaro and Koike Yuriko in Tokyo, the various Nippon Ishin no Kai members who have governed Osaka since 2008 (Matsui, Hashimoto, Yoshimura), Lee Myungbak and Oh Sehoon in Seoul, etc. It's not uniform (e.g. in between Oh Sehoon's terms, we had a couple terms of leftist Park Wonsoon, who killed himself after it was revealed he'd been sexually harassing his secretary for years), but I think a particular blend of mostly free market economics and culturally right-wing/nationalistic politics has been pretty successful in East Asian urban areas. I think this is one of the reasons East Asian megacities tend to do a pretty good job at basic tasks like crime and infrastructure, while American cities tend to be shitholes. But of course, I am somewhat biased because these are mostly my politics too, so I may be (mis)interpreting the political environment in Seoul and Tokyo as a kind of vindication of my political views.
He wants a more productive producer class to benefit the parasite class.
Makes sense if you're a parasite.
Brooks will never stop saying "bobo."
I'm picturing a mash up of Brooks and Biden, wandering around shouting, "Don't jump, Bobo!"
The problem is that the lefties leave the CrapHole cities they created in blue states, and then they recreate those CrapHole cities in formerly decent places. Just look what happened to Vermont. Those librul mold spores travel on the wind….and create more CrapHoles wherever they land.
I, for one, have no interest whatsoever in that policy blend that manifestly turns a nice place into a CrapHole place.
- Krumhorn
David Brooks? Isn't he that phoney "conservative" asshole who ditched his wife for a popsy and gets paid to tell lies for the NYT?
Yeah, here we go; "In 2017, Brooks married his former research assistant he met while writing The Road to Character, writer Anne Snyder." That's right, "The Road To Character". I guess he was going there so fast he missed the exit.
I've spent way too much time watching the Nebraska debate on this trans business. The Jacobins think it is an effective argument to threaten the GOP with people leaving the state or not coming to the state because Nebraska has conservative values. The Left doesn't understand the Right. We don't care. We are not exclusively focused on making money. We object to kids being subjected to medical experiments. We put morality above money.
Nebraska right now has a less restrictive abortion bill than some neighboring states. NE has abortion tourism now with two guys doing 99% of the abortions. By the Left's reasoning, NE should keep the old law for economic development reasons.
Listening to the Nebraska Jacobins I've come to the conclusion that they are members of the Cult of Transgenderism. There is no reasoning with them. They scream that if you don't agree with them, then you are a hater. Completely irrational.
Divided government at the federal level does seem to be the only way federal budgets get balanced, but if you look at New Orleans, St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland and Atlanta, Blue Cities in Red States don't seem to have a lot to recommend themselves.
I suspect Brooks is talking about Sunbelt cities that experienced growth after WWII and aren't burdened by the problems of older cities. He's looking at a snapshot, an equilibrium that won't last. Once Los Angeles was something like a Blue City in a Red State. Look at it now.
Brooks may be trying to recycle his "bourgeois bohemian" idea, and yes, if you want to live in a city, you want the lifestyle freedom, energy and creativity of urban life, and you also want your city to be safe and well-managed, but it looks to me like there's less to the Blue Cities in Red States idea and the bobo idea than meets the eye. "Bourgeois bohemianism" is, well, bourgeois. And bohemian. It's superficial and unsustainable. The same can be said for "socially liberal and fiscally conservative" or "Blue Cities in Red States."
Joe Rogan has mentioned something similar to what Brooks describes here as being what drew him to Austin. He says it's a nice balance of the things he likes about California, with red Texas to restrain the crazier bits.
The combination of right-leaning economic policy and left-leaning social policy is kind of what Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were proposing as the "Third Way" back in the 90's. It was, for a brief moment, a popular idea, that I seem to recall Brooks being on PBS every Friday back then, so he should remember this.
The appeal of it, I think, is that it's predicated on the idea that compromise is a good thing. Many of us that would be the natural constituency for the party Brooks describes are nostalgic for a past (real or imagined) when "no surrender" politics wasn't the norm. It seems like a lot of the fear of states going purple is that it might require compromises.
It would be interesting to have a conversation with him as to how he thinks this would work in the real word. And whether it actually should. Might have to lace his coffee with scopalomine or some other truth serum.
Unless he actually believes this stuff.
Sort of like the red state is the zookeeper for the "educated" inmates of their own disaster.
Perhaps you should mention that Brooks does not write the headline?
One problem is people who are attracted to blue cities also vote in state-wide elections, and they vote blue.
And how are those blue policies working?
-Parents have had enough with their teacher union/NamBLA endorsed school boards.
-Homeachooling is at a record high.
Crooked Soros DAs are letting their own populace die when shot, run over, and beaten by BLM, Transagressors, and champagne antifa thugs.
"a working-class populist party that has no interest in nurturing highly educated bobo boom towns."*
The highly-cedentialed "bobo"s didn't keep the managerialism tyranny in the cities. They decided their control had to be manifest in all areas of society.
Burnham argued in that book that Western society would not see the collapse of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. Instead, he maintained, America would likely see capitalism replaced by a nonsocialist successor—one dominated not by capitalists in the classical sense but by a class of managers that would come to control the real economy, regardless of formal ownership status.
--Malcolm Kyeyune
Wokeness, the Highest Stage of Managerialism
Well-educated progressives wield institutional power to impose a new political and social order.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/wokeness-the-highest-stage-of-managerialism
Contrast the US with how Europe provides for the make-work sinecures for the college grads at the expense of the working people.
But in at least one sense, it does what it is supposed to do: provide make-work jobs for university graduates who would otherwise risk going unemployed—and become potential social agitators.
Sweden is rife with various taxes, carve-outs, fees, and other accommodations that together form a massive patronage machine employing artists, bureaucrats, gender-studies majors, activists, curators, mindfulness consultants, environmental advocates, and much more. The state aggressively pays for art, education, NGOs, and even journalism—most major newspapers in Sweden depend heavily on subsidies to stay in the black. Perhaps the best illustration of the Swedish political economy is that Swedes pay in the neighborhood of $9 per gallon for gas. This massive cost difference owes almost entirely to taxes and fees, which fund social work. At first, the gas tax was intended primarily to pay for the maintenance of roads. Today, people argue for raising gas taxes to fund environmentalist causes. The managers running these causes are trying to fund themselves by imposing regressive taxes on their blue-collar countrymen.
Althouse writes "But Brooks would like it if one party would embrace the entire range of what he thinks works: 'conservative-leaning on business matters and more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration, and workforce development.'"
Ah, David Brooks, the sole member of the politics is the art of the impossible school of thought. (You may read illusion for thought, if you wish.)
What Brooks would like is impossible, unless American governments revert to the condition lauded by Thomas Jefferson and critically analyzed by Alexis de Tocqueville, Jeffersonian democracy, the system whereby the Federal government confines itself to matters such as international relations and national defense, and leaves everything else to the states, which themselves strictly adhere to Jeffersonian principles, and chiefly to the People. However, blue politicians can't tolerate this condition because it devolves political power to people they deem inferior to themselves. Blues are Marxists. Reds are not. (That's topsy-turvey from the point of view of traditional European politics where the Reds are the commies, but that's what we got when broadcast journalism met color television.)
Given their druthers, Blues would never tolerate a Red city within a state they dominated, if for no other reason than the stark contrast of peaceful orderliness of the Red city compared to the nastiness of the Blue state as a whole. All Power to the Soviets! isn't just a slogan. Marxism cannot function without dictatorship and the exclusive hold on power.
On the other hand, a Red state might welcome a Blue city within its borders for the propaganda value. The outflux of its citizens into the reddish suburbs would be amusing, though expensive since the abandoned and crime-ravaged Blue city would eventually have to be cleaned up and rebuilt.*
Thus, a blue city in a red state can't endure because its tax base will inevitably erode to nothing, leaving it bankrupt and desolate. Whereas, a Red city in a Blue state must face extermination, because the contradiction cannot be allowed to exist.
*The quintessential Blue city, San Francisco, the woke paradise, is currently attempting to rebuild itself without fundamental reform. It will fail because SanFran cannot pay police officers enough to move there, enforce its Marxist ordinances, and raise their families amidst filth and madness. A million a year as a patrolman's starting salary might garner SanFran an effective police force, but the city can't afford that unless they sack all the free drug and food programs, the free housing programs, the pernicious DEI functionaries, and the other municipal lazybones that get paid but do nothing concrete except play MS solitaire. That won't happen, even Red cities have padded payrolls they can't seem to expunge.
Yes, Austin TX DA charged an Uber driver, who was attacked by a man with an AK47, with murder and an Austin jury convicted him. No self defense in deep blue Austin. My son and grand daughter were looking at colleges two years ago and crossed off UT because Austin was "a dump."
This has been the dynamic in Ann Arbor MI for a few decades now. The legislature was Republican majority even when the governor was a Democrat, so Ann Arbor has been limited as to how far left it can go in matters big and small -- for example, rent-control is illegal in Michigan as is the banning of plastic shopping bags. But now (at least for an election cycle), the Democrats have control of all the statewide offices AND the legislature (thanks MAGA folks!) so the state-level guard rails are starting to come off.
Jobs are in the cities and their suburbs, not in the rural areas. So cities in states with business friendly climates are growing. But the young people who are searching for jobs are more liberal on social issues, so those cities, like Austin, are turning blue. People worry more about jobs than the business environment, so graduates from the liberal academy still often end up in blue states.
But it's still a fact that blue states contribute more to the economy than red states, regardless or maybe because of their high taxes, etc.
I heard on the radio that the political split between Americans is now 25% Democrats, 25% Republicans and 49% identify as Independent. If true, I see it as a positive development.
I'm so old......I remember when blue states were republican, and red cities were democrats.
I guess the media had to switch colors.......cuz we don't want the democrats looking like commies!
Dream on Ann... the 'blue' state's philosophy is shit.
Red states don't need the welfare state.. if you come here WORK
No work, no eat.
How's it going with the liberal take on education and immigration?
He wants more of that clusterfuck?
Well over half of the kids in the inner cities can't read, write, or perform basic math calculations.
Jeez.
Interesting that he addresses education. I now believe the education system is the biggest driver and perpetuator of class inequality, and that a lot of what some ascribe to systemic racism is the second- and third-order effects of that system.
I’m not teacher-bashing. I know a lot of wonderful ones. But the public education system is a Democratic stronghold run largely for the benefit of its providers, not its customers. It is jarring to see education cited as something Democrats do notably well.
I read "Bobos in Paradise" years ago and found it interesting. It's now horribly outdated.
"Conservative-leaning on business matters and more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development" is EXACTLY what we've had for decades. It's the status quo. What it means is: Republicans represent corporations and Democrats represent everyone else.
Brooks is a 20th century "conservative": 'We focus on business and let the Left decide those icky cultural issues, like whether kids should have dads and are whites inherent racists.' If you're happy with how things are, Brooks' thinking is for you.
Bobo is the Spanish word for ‘buffoon.”
Austin is a blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup
The blue blight spreads through consumption, cannibalism, sequestration, then migrates to a fair climate, a green environment, a productive population, where it reemerges in a big bang and progresses with an emergent ouroboros model.
What makes him think that left-leaning cities excel at education? Of all his arguments that's the most ridiculous.
So tired of having the world measured by people like David Brooks.
It currently says "No Comments" so this will be #67 when they are posted.
And BOBO's in Paradise" was very funny, when it war written in the 90's (or was it 80's?)
Bobo is also a name that UGA has suffered under for 20 years. But the guy is an old team mate of their head coach with a better last name: Smart.
Clearly Mr Brooks is not a populist. But he has enough money to hire his own private security. Otherwise he would have moved to Florida long ago. Advice from Brooks is worth exactly nothing.
California has red areas. So does Illinois.
California has red areas.
Most of California is red. We're dominated by San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, and the Democratic Party changed the rules to benefit themselves.
Ampersand: "Brooks is utterly incoherent here."
Evergreen.
no idiot, brooks has done enough damage,
I guess I wonder whether the job growth Brooks talks about is in "Blue Cities" or whether it is in "Blue City Areas." These areas are run by various entities other than City Corruption Central and these other entities - towns, parts of other counties - are all really operating under Red State Rules + Thai food. Brooks is looking in the rear view mirror as the post-World War II order shrinks into the past and he's reporting as if he was looking at the present and the on-rushing future. It's all different now. The old brave democracies of the old order now have a way of counting votes which favors the senile, the brain-injured and any Friend of Total Abusive Power while the East European countries, Russia's former brain-washed satellites, are standing up for real democracy and the humanities.
education, immigration and work force development.
Educational performance has declined since the Dept of Education was made a cabinet level dept.
and in a steep decline the last 25 years.
Immigration can't be addressed until the border comes under control
Work force development? See education.
David Brooks lives in a DC Bubble, off other peoples money.
Brooks is Asshoe
"Dream on Ann..."
What "dream" are you ascribing to me?
How can you mistake Brooks's views for mine? I wrote: "I suppose I'm in the group Brooks thinks he's talking about, but I don't see why working class people ought to feel nurturing toward my city. And I'm worried that impractical people in my own city are going to ruin things."
What's the "dream"?!
Bobo is the Spanish word for ‘buffoon.”
A masculine buffoon at that. Double ungood in these interesting times.
“Austin is a blue city in a red state, and many Progressives have fled California to live there. Not all that long ago San Diego was a red city in a blue state. (That has changed)”
Lived in Austin for 5 years, moving to PHX 20 years ago to get cooler in the summers. Hated the weather, fire ants, and that it was so flat (though they claim it’s in the Hill Country). But otherwise, it was great. Loved the party scene on the south side every weekend. In particular, I became a resident in one of the cigar bars there. And when people came into town, could take them slumming on E 6th Street, where every bar had really good live music. The houses were mostly brand new, and very nice. Big houses and big yards. I lived alone in a brand new 2400’ two story on a quarter acre, and my Saturdays for several summers were spent trying to irradiate the ubiquitous fire ants. I did see some of the seedier side, with a good friend running a big strip joint there. This was the Red Rose. The bigger ones all seemed to be named after roses. He put on the biggest New Year’s party in town, where the guys showed up in tuxes, and the gals glittered in floor length gowns. Formals were a thing there, with one to attend every 2-3 months.
And now? It seems to have turned into a shithole. Convicting a guy of murder after he shot a guy pointing an “assault weapon” at him. But not prosecuting the homeless bums or AntiFA terrorists. And a good friend in San Diego is now talking about moving because of what has happened there.
Blogger walter said...
"California has red areas. So does Illinois."
Yes they do. Rural California is solid conservative and also poor. Illinois would be all red if not for a few counties where the leftist voting blocks are. And that's where the majority of people are.
"People, in general people in red states, like the rule of law. People in charge of blue states don't."
Based on what stats? It seems red states have higher crime rates than blue states.
(And, though it gets a rap by know-nothings as "crime city", NYC, a blue city, is one of the safest cities in the world. I lived in NYC for 40 years and saw its crime rate drop over time, but even at its worst, I nearly always felt safe walking and commuting in the city.)
'California has red areas. So does Illinois.'
Anywhere 50 miles from the coast in CA is conservative.
Lots of farmers and ranchers, fewer Tik Tok influencers...
Let me just agree with what a lot of people have said.
First, Brooks (and his media employers) are constantly lying about his politics. He voted for Obama in 2008. He voted for Hillary and Biden. He's not some "moderate" or "Conservative". He's a "reasonable" liberal/leftist who wants low taxes on the well-to-do and support for Big Business. And if given a choice between a Business friendly conservative and Liberal/leftist, he's chosen the latter. WHo was more "Business friendly" than Businessman Trump? Yet Brooks thinks he's Satan.
As others have pointed out, places like Colorado, Washington, Oregon, and even Calf, used to be red/purple states with Blue cities. And once enough liberal/leftists (American or foreign) moved in to the big city metro areas, they became deep blue states.
GA and NC are turning "Blue" because liberal/leftist (foreign and domestic) love the "Blue city/red state" dynamic. And when they get there, the liberal/leftist newcomers immediately work like beavers to change to Deep blue.
Its amazing to look back to the 50s to 80s and see what a paradise Calf was back then. But people like Brooks with their love of immigration (legal and illegal) and liberal/leftism ruined it. For everyone except people like Brooks. They changed it from Iowa by the sea. To New York West.
Democrats... atmosphere that welcomes diversity
Diversity as in color judgment, class-based bigotry, political congruence ("="). Yawning. Gaping... black as your heart.
"conservative-leaning on business matters and more liberal-leaning on things like education, immigration and work force development."
If you're a David Brooks type person, your kids probably won't be in public school anyway, so if you want Blue City education, it's probably because you want work in or otherwise profit off the school system. Blue Cities are even doing away with or diddling with the examination schools that the people like David Brooks might consider sending their children to.
What Brooks seems to prefer is a society with plenty of cheap immigrant labor and ethnic restaurants and funding for people like himself and his readers. He's living in the world of a half-century or more ago, when people could assume the country was healthy and seek "interesting" diversions.
There. Are. No. Blue. States…
…there are only blue cities.
I was early on fleeing blue cities. I made a mint. I’d like to think it’s because I’m a real estate genius but nah…
I think Martyh nailed it.
The attractiveness of large cities is for the young childless 10% high income group professionals, along with empty nest wealthy who come back for the food and entertainment. The poor gain nothing in a city that they can't get elsewhere (and the schools are worse), but they can have majority minority power, if that helps.
The urban wealthy used to be immune to violence, but that is no longer the case. And the destructive fallout of COVID has accelerated the fall due to lack of commuters who ballast the city with good safe people in the daytime and spend a lot.
"Impractical people." That's a good turn of phrase to describe the people whose policies are causing so much trouble for the nation. Most of them have no understanding at all of what makes a nation function properly. For the most part, they have never done an honest day's work in their lives, and don't understand where food comes from, how energy is generated and distributed, etc., so their pie-in-the-sky plans to get rid of fossil fuels (for example) will eventually come smack up against reality, likely with a body count. The impractical people also lack a fundamental understanding of human nature. Utopia doesn't exist, and never will, even as the impractical people try again and again, unsuccessfully, to bring it about.
Red cities in blue states: Fresno, Bakersfield, Las Vegas (though the mayor of Las Vegas is an independent, not a Republican).
Where I grew up in Alabama, Bobo was a respected family name, derived from the French Baubeau or Beaubeau. Many French people immigrated to Alabama after the fall of Napoleon. They founded the city of Demopolis.
What's the "dream"?!
I can tell you my dream. Its that you leave Meade for Bob Dylan.
Somehow, the world would then make sense.
You've never met anyone like me, I'm socially liberal but fiscally conservative... Had been a meme of stale chamber of commerce Republican/libertarian types since at least Bush. It's the rallying cry of every Republican policy that eschews picking up millions of potential voters in upper New England, the Lakes, and the PNW in favor of chasing the elusive Memphis voter that will finally prove, once and for all, how NOT RACIST the GOP has become. It is the party that will nominate Nikki Hayley. It is what Trump 2016 offered an alternative to.
The fruits of this group is it can't conserve a single thing over a single generation, and it can't produce a balanced budget either. It's only defense is to claim that it's not incompetent, merely impotent.
All it has really managed on the state level is to slow things down a bit compared to blue states, which means the municipal implosions happen in those states first (and for a time attract other libs to focus their efforts in the blue, buying further reprieve for the red states)
But it is not a sustainable model, because red state govs are downstream of blue Feds and so will be swallowed up in due time. Whether it's Californication of mountain states or the purpling of Dixie states, Red State milquetoast republicanism that Brooks espouses has no end game besides slow death. Buying time only works if you plan to use the time bought to do something.
Blogger Rusty said...
" Shorter Brooks. The broken window fallacy.
People, in general people in red states, like the rule of law. People in charge of blue states don't."
Have to congratulate Rusty- he actually posted something without bringing up pedophiles. maybe the new medication is working.
Jupiter said...
"David Brooks? Isn't he that phoney "conservative" asshole who ditched his wife for a popsy"
No that was Gingrich. or Limbaugh. Or Trump.
Althouse
"And I'm worried that impractical people in my own city are going to ruin things."
Those would be the impractical people who are paying for Ann's pension.
Re: Robert Cook:
(And, though it gets a rap by know-nothings as "crime city", NYC, a blue city, is one of the safest cities in the world.
Did . . did you use the wrong link? I mean NYC is definitely the safest large city in the US, by a pretty wide margin. But that site you linked is full of warnings about avoid this neighbourhood, or look out for pickpockets here, here's the criminal gangs, etc., like its written for foreigners who naively expect big cities in developed countries to actually be safe.
I would be quite surprised if NYC were one of the safest cities in the world. Off the top of my head, I would guess Tokyo, Seoul, Osaka, Nagoya, and Busan probably all have significantly lower levels of homicide and violent crime. I suspect Shanghai is also significantly safer too, from what I hear from foreigners living there and from working there a couple months myself, although it's harder to do a reliable comparison since I don't trust statistics from the PRC (if you do, Beijing, Jinan, Shenyang, Harbin, Changchun, Wuhan, Nanjing, Changsha, Chongqing, Chengdu, Xian, Kaifeng, and probably twenty other cities I know nothing about are safer than New York). Taipei, Singapore, and Hong Kong all feel significantly safer than New York as well (although I think Hong Kong has pickpockets, or used to at least). Even European cities, despite pickpockets, property crime, and riots, probably have lower levels of homicide and violent crime, although I'm less confident there -- New York might be merely average compared against the European metropolises. But not, I would think, a city anyone should be holding up as world class in crime control.
It's amazing that Brooks can say this about Blue Education. Has he never read the 2019 Atlantic article, When The Culture War Comes For The Kids, in which a progressive tells the sad tale of how hard he has tried to do the right thing by progressive values in schools his kids attend, only to discover how awful they're becoming - and actually have been. Key quotes on the mindset involving his own son:
When the rejection letter arrived, I took it hard as a comment on our son, until my wife informed me that the woman with the frozen smile had actually been interviewing us. We were the ones who’d been rejected.
...
Places at the preschool were awarded on a first-come, first-served basis. At the front of the line, parents were lying in sleeping bags. They had spent the night outside.
...
The morning after the election, the kids cried.
I'm sorry but if you're kids are crying because of an election then you and the schools have done a poor job of protecting their innocence, likely deliberately so to turn them into little political activists.
There's also this eye-opening piece about the early days of the gender ID movement when the school reacts to a girl IDing as a boy by replacing all the GIRLS and BOYS toilet signs with STUDENTS, leading to:
The school didn’t inform parents of this sudden end to an age-old custom, as if there were nothing to discuss. Parents only heard about it when children started arriving home desperate to get to the bathroom after holding it in all day. Girls told their parents mortifying stories of having a boy kick open their stall door. Boys described being afraid to use the urinals. Our son reported that his classmates, without any collective decision, had simply gone back to the old system, regardless of the new signage>
Based on what stats? It seems red states have higher crime rates than blue states.
Appropriately for this post the group that put that out is called ThirdWay.org and as this article pointed out about their "study" (pro-Dem propaganda more like) as they worked through ThirdWay's top ten murder states:
The No. 1 state on Third Way’s list is Mississippi. Sure enough, the statewide vote in the 2020 election was for Trump. But within the state, Hinds County residents voted for Joe Biden, 3 to 1. Mississippi’s biggest city, Jackson, is in Hinds County. You know where this is going.
Reporting on Jackson last year, CNN declared it “one of the deadliest U.S. cities.”
The mayor of Jackson is Chokwe Antar Lumumba, a Democrat. The district attorney is Jody Owens, a Democrat.
And on and on.
To recap, of the eight red states listed in Third Way’s report as being among the top 10 with the highest murder rate, the cities where all that murder is happening are run almost exclusively by Democrats. All but one had a Democrat mayor. And all but one had a Democrat responsible for pursuing criminal prosecutions.
Mutaman said...
"Althouse
"And I'm worried that impractical people in my own city are going to ruin things."
Those would be the impractical people who are paying for Ann's pension."
Every taxpayer in Wisconsin is paying Miss Ann's pension. Just like every taxpayer in whatever blue helllhole you live in will eventually be paying your pension. What a waste of money.
Jupiter: "David Brooks? Isn't he that phoney "conservative" asshole who ditched his wife for a popsy"
Mutaman: "No that was Gingrich. or Limbaugh. Or Trump."
Nope. That was indeed Brooks who got his first wife to convert to judaism and change her first name! He later left her for one of his assistants not that long ago.
Biden of course had no need to divorce since he was apparently already having an affair with Jill The Babysitter (according to Jill's ex) and later Joe spent years showering with his adolescent daughter according to Joe's own daughter who wrote about how these activities sexualized her at a very young age and really messed her up.
I fully expect Mutaman to claim Ashley Biden's own diary to be russian disinformation.
The conservative "intellectual" craving for losing-with-dignity a la Mitt Romney is here to stay, apparently.
It's fallen out of favor but "cuck" as an insult for people with this mindset seems fitting, now. They like losing!
What exactly does Brooks think are the accomplishments of big city education?
"...do these exist? — red cities in blue states?"
Of course not. Cities are evil, so naturally they trend leftist. Small towns can be conservative (and by that I mean conservative conservative, not 'Republican') but once a town gets beyond a certain size its doom is sealed.
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